Shooting a stand-still pano

I’ve been having fun shooting panos — panoramas — with my phone. While the one above isn’t especially artful, it does show off what can be done if you let the subject move while you stand still. In this one I’m looking toward the opposite platform in a New York subway station.

This has to be done when the train is going slow enough: when it is starting to depart, or finishing an arrival. My son also pointed something else out: you have to move too, just a tiny bit, so the accelerometer in the phone thinks you’re shooting a normal pano.

Most cameras in new phones have the pano feature. Mine is an iPhone 5s. You just bring up the camera and choose the pano format. It’s the one all the way to the right. Then you can choose panning left to right or right to left. (It reverses when you tap it.) Pretty easy. Play around and have fun with it.